Digital Transformation Comes into Effect
According to the news form Linkshop.com, Carrefour Group released her financial statement over the first half year of 2018. It says the profit she achieved was vigorously 177% more than that she earned over the same period of last year. The remarkable accomplishment should be attributed to the digital transformation she made.
Ever since Carrefour reached strategic cooperation partnership with Tencent in January 2018, the constant exploration and close collaboration on the intelligent retail business between the two giants have been on the road. Their first cooperative project, Le Marche came out for business operation officially in May, 2018.
As a life flagship store representing global smart retail format of Carrefour, Le Marche never fails to display the idea “Life Store” in the aspects of its internal designs, styles of layouts, merchandise selection and area allocation. Owing to its adoption of innovatory shopping experience and service such as the payment based on scanning face, checkout via scanning QR code on applet platform and IP interactive method of drawing potential consumption flows, Le Marche really presents its customers what intelligent store is.
The arrival of Le Marche, not merely enriches Carrefour’s format in China, but elevates the sales and operation efficiencies, as well as enhances the proportion of young shoppers’ coming to store for a browse by introducing convenient yet fashionable shopping experience and stylish IP contents. It is learned that its entity stores in the cities like Shenzhen will be transformed and upgraded. Accordingly, the transformation to the intelligent retail will be widely promoted and adopted among the entity stores in China.
Drilldown of Digital Transformation and Innovation, Payment via QR Code Scanning Will come into use at All its Stores in China by the End of 2018
Moreover, Carrefour has been carrying out digital innovation, diversifying its access to the online and offline integration and upgrading its operational capability accurately. Making use of WeChat Pay, its brand official account and relevant applet helps Carrefour get access to its users and members. Because of working closely with Tencent Social Ads, the aid of the insights into users and precise orientation helps increase the download quantity of Carrefour’s brand App. To a large extent, the ways of purchasing via scanning QR code, WeChat Pay, and Scanning face enlarge Carrefour’s capability for digitalization on online and offline shopping.
Every since the time when Carrefour’s applet came out, there have been 3 major upgrades on its App with amazing performance respectively in daily access amount and average daily visitor number. Currently, Carrefour’s App consists of the functions, such as purchasing via scanning QR code, receiving discount coupon distributed regionally, viewing electronic posters, informing membership rights and benefits, as well as organizing group purchase marketing events, which empowers Carrefour to acquire quite a few new members and drives the rapid growth of its sales performance.
Lining up at store for checkout has been negatively impacting consumers’ shopping experience in department stores and supermarkets. Purchase via scanning QR code, as an effective solution to the negative shopping experience, enables every consumer to get a barcode scanner, which turns the way of “Paying while shopping” into reality. At present, the number of Carrefour supermarkets adopting QR code-scanning payment accounts for more than 20% among its entities in southern China region. It is reported that the QR code-scanning payment will be generalized and adopted among all its entities in the entire southern China region over this quarter of months in 2018. By the end of this year, the QR code-scanning payment will come into use at all its entities in China.
Continuous Extension of Online Market, Pursuit of Win-Win Based on Multi-Platform Cooperation
Carrefour Online Mall has been coming out successively in 32 cities of China, planning to fully cover the range of cities where its entities are located in China by the end of this year. As the demand of online shopping gets stronger and stronger, Carrefour’s applet, e-mall enters into test phase, which will provide consumers with diversified and more convenient shopping service except for turning social connection flow into direct consumption power.
On August 8, 2018, Carrefour worked with Meituan to mould a flash shopping festival for the day, its entity in Xuhui, Shangahi opened up an around-clock delivery business with the help of ads in WeChat Moment and its official account publicity at WeChat platform. Meanwhile, Carrefour aligned with WeChat Pay to initiate an Intelligent Life Day on August 8, 2018, when it distributed a great number of discount coupons to build up another round of sales climax.
Improvement on Supply Chain Construction and In-depth Transformation of Food
In 2014, Carrefour started to build up its own logistics and distribution system. Till 2016, its 6 modern logistics and distribution centers came into use, achieving a full coverage of all its entities’ logistics and distribution in China; by then, Carrefour had formed a resource integration of its online e-malls and offline entities, which helped increase the types of merchandise available in its entities in the third-tier and fourth-tier cities, and lower its transportation cost in the first-tier and second-tier cities, as well as achieve prominent performance in improving stock-out. For the moment, its corresponding cold-chain center and satellite warehouse are synchronically under arrangement.
In the early of 2018, Carrefour Group released a “2022 Transformation Scheme”, aimed to be the pioneer of the transformation on global food consumption. According to the scheme, the number of consumers buying the fresh food from Carrefour will increase by one million, its sales gained from organic food will reach to 5 billion EUR, and the proportion of its own-brand turnover will account for one-third by 2022.
By August, 2018, the number of the products from Carrefour’s own brand has approximately reached 200, all of which pass through Carrefour Group’s examination or are approved and certified by Global Food Safety Initiative. By doing this, Carrefour strives to offer consumers healthy yet reasonably priced merchandise with high-quality and reliability. In addition to traditional organic vegetable and cereals, Carrefour sells organic pork and beef in the more areas of its entities, enriching Chinese consumers’ dining culture life and catering for the demand of upgraded consumption in the Chinese market.
The development of Chinese retail business changes with every single day passing by. As Mr. Jianian Tang the CEO in charge of Carrefour’s business in China Mainland said, “China, as a piece of experimental field for retail business, can bring in inspiration, experience and lessons for Carrefour Group and other countries.” Carrefour will keep sticking to the developmental strategy of multi-format and multi-platform, drill down the digital transformation and innovation, carry out its scheme for transformation on food, and bring more and better life experience as well as service to consumers.
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